Exhibition

Life of a Craphead Bugs

EXHIBITION | 07 April – 20 May 2017
DAILY SCREENING TIMES | 12:00, 1:15, 2:30 and 3:45 p.m.
OPENING RECEPTION | Friday 07 April | 7:00 p.m.
EVENING SCREENING AT CINEMATHEQUE | Tuesday 18 April | 7:00 p.m.

PLATFORM centre for photographic + digital arts in collaboration with WNDX Festival of Moving Image is pleased to announce the Gallery 2 exhibition Bugs by Life of a Craphead (ON). Life of a Craphead is the collaboration of Toronto based artists Amy Lam and Jon McCurley. Bugs is a 72 minute DIY film produced over 2011-2015 with a large cast and crew of artists and comedians. The exhibition runs from 07 April – 20 May 2017 with an opening reception scheduled for Friday 07 April at 7 PM. An evening screening of Bugs is scheduled for Tuesday 18 April at 7 PM in the Cinematheque. Both events are free and open to the public.

NOTE: due to the length of the film — daily screening times of Bugs will be at noon, 1:15, 2:30 and 3:45.

“Featuring situations like a university lecture gone wrong and a failed SNL episode, Bugs presents the absurdity of life within a patriarchal society obsessed with success. The DIY film sets the Bug universe right in the middle of the real world, creating multiple layers of reality that interact with each other.

Bugs is a satire about a bug society and its most successful family. The Bug Prime Minister, Shay (Gerry Campbell), has ruled the Bug Garden for many years and is finally, reluctantly, retiring. He’s chosen his niece, Gaston (Liz Peterson), to take over — but Gaston, who is plagued with ambitions to be the Bug Garden’s most respected politician-architect-filmmaker — is folding under the pressure. Dan is his other niece, but she’s a dreamer and can’t be trusted; she’s full of conflicting ideals and tries to act on all of them.

Shay goes to the Oracle for advice and they foretell that his family can’t be saved. Meanwhile, a government worker/aspiring comedian Sexy Bug (Glenn Macaulay) and his best friend Rob (Peter Kalyniuk) are sick of the Shay family’s rule. They plot to vandalize a monument being built to honour the family. From afar, the neighbouring Bird Country celebrates another Bug political failure.”

BIOGRAPHY

Life of a Craphead is the collaboration of Amy Lam and Jon McCurley since 2006. Their work spans performance art, film, and curation. Performance projects include The Life of a Craphead Fifty Year Retrospective, 2006-2056 (Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, 2013), an fake career retrospective of all the work they will ever make; Double Double Land Land (Gallery TPW, Toronto, 2009), a play interrupted by a staged wedding; and Free Lunch (2007), a public, anonymously-advertised free lunch serving everything on the menu of a restaurant.

Their first feature film Bugs (72 min., 2016) has screened in Canada and the U.S., including at Night Gallery, Los Angeles; The Western Front, Vancouver; Parsons School for Design, NYC; The Khyber Centre for the Arts, Halifax; and S1, Portland, among others. Life of a Craphead also run and host the popular performance art show and online broadcast Doored, which has featured work by over 100 artists. Between 2006-09, Life of a Craphead performed frequently on live comedy shows including at Laugh Sabbath (Toronto) and UCB Theatre (L.A. & NYC). They are the recipients of grants and awards from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Toronto Arts Council. Their work has been featured in Canadian Art, C Magazine, and Art in America. They are Chinese and Vietnamese and live and work in Toronto, Canada.